Everything is more complicated offshore

Hey everyone,

 

I'm still offshore.  At the moment, we're waiting for the sea conditions to improve to continue with the operation.  The forecast is for things to get better by Tuesday.  Today is Sunday.  Ho hum... that means lots of time to hang around the rig.  I slept all day yesterday, thinking that we were going to be working this morning at 4am.  When the sea conditions worsened, it meant that we weren't going to be working this morning and that I could sleep all night.  Oh darn!!  It's rather difficult to sleep when you're completely well rested.

 

I decided to go use the gym to use up some energy and be able to sleep through the night.  I started running on the treadmill, and it was, by far, the most interesting treadmill experience I have ever had.  Running on a treadmill is normally a simple thing- you just run forward.  There's no incline unless you program it; there are no bumps or cracks in the sidewalk, no puddles to jump over or avoid.  Very basic.  Anyway, this is the mentality of someone who's never run on a treadmill on a floating rig with poor sea conditions.  I started running at my normal pace, but despite the fact that the velocity of the treadmill never changed, I was running all over the place.  Because of the action of the waves and the rocking of the rig, I was running in circles and running forward at the same time.  Sometimes I would be almost falling off the back of the treadmill, encroaching on the front, or side-stepping to keep from catching my foot on the edge of tread and stationary frame.  If you tracked my actual position on the treadmill, I'm pretty sure it would look like something a drunk person created with a Spirograph (toy from my childhood... look it up on Wikipedia if you've never played with one).  I thought the whole experience was really funny, and I was really glad I was in there by myself for the majority of my run.

 

Well, that's all for now.  I'm heading off to the Sunday churrasco lunch, complete with non-alcoholic beer.  Later it's the big game (soccer of course) on TV and watching movies on my computer.  Maybe I'll head up to the gym again this afternoon :)

 

Love,